1.28.2010

Tram Line Project

The little plastic people of Quinntopia have spoken, and they've decided they want light rail! No longer are they content to pretend to drive their little cars (with wheels that don't move!) or stand on the station platforms as yet again the Thalys speeds on by! No, they want their trolley / tram system!

This tram line project on the layout that has been holding up a lot, and one that I've procrastinated on for quite some time. It is also one of the key drivers of my decision to expand and rebuild my city/downtown...which I feel like I've been talking about on this blog for far too long!

My approach is probably a somewhat unconventional one. There are a few good solutions that I've been thinking about for quite a while. I've never had good results with spackle or plaster, although I know some folks who have done a really nice job with this, I just don't have the skills or patience for this approach. Having been exposed to the Tomix Tram system about a year ago finally got my mental gears going on this, and I've been thinking about how to use this system and still maintain flush and realistic looking streets. I've also been dragging my feet as I've been waiting to see how the Kato Unitram system was going to look and what would be available. I expect someday that I'll regret my own approach as the Unitram system has real potantial, but I can't wait on Kato to hold up my layout construction!

My method, once again, used sintra, that hard, foam-like plastic material commonly used for lightweight signage. For the 'downtown' area where the tram tracks will run, there is actually two layers of this 1/4" sintra; one for the base that sits on top of the styrofoam, and another layer of sintra that is actually the street and which will be cut to match the rail width of the Tomix Finetrack I am using for the tram section of the layout.

This is where the Tomix Tram system comes in. One of the most difficult questions I had to answer was getting precise (or nearly so) curves for the layout. The Tomix Tram sections provided a useful template.

Once I had all my tram track laid out, I just duct-taped the pieces to the sintra, slid the track out from the Tomix Tram section, marked the interior edges of the tram pieces for cutting, and then continued these lines on to the next curve. Pretty simple!

After getting the entire outline of the tram line cut out, a process which actually went a lot better and quicker than I had been expecting, I could start to lay it out on the base sheet with the track to check my cutting and the 'fit':

The biggest challenge at this point was creating an inverted 'bevel' on the edges of the sintra that come into contact with the track/roadbed. This is critical, as I've found that if there is an even a hair of the sintra that is higher than the rails, the tram will lose contact with the rail and stop. I could just sand/gouge down the top side of the sintra, but that does look sort of crude and would not have a smooth finish that I was looking for. An Xacto knife and my Dremel tool helped me with this very time-consuming project (the below photo shows the underside of the sintra where the roadbed contacts the sintra)!

After a coat of dark grey primer, the 'street' was then placed back on the layout and more testing and fine-tuning took place.

Once the wiring (including an auto-reversing unit) was complete, the track was attached with small nails, and the street could finally be cemented to the base. At which point, gaps between the rails and the sintra were filled with either paintable caulk or Testor's putty.

As mentioned above, all of the curves are Tomix Finetrack (both 103mm and 140mm), but some of the straight sections are either Minitrix snap track or Atlas flex track. They are all code 80 so there was no problem connecting them together. I did choose to directly solder feeder wires to the bottoms of the Tomix finetrack as the defauly connectors for Tomix were too bulky to properly integrate.

Wallah! Everything works (the reverse unit, the trams!) and it looks like this major milestone on the layout redesign (what I think I've referred to as Version 3.0) is done! Well, almost. I still need to give the street a better color and cover up the gap-filling caulk, add street markings, and add in the center pieces for the curves from Tomix, and straight pieces of styrene for the straight sections.

What this means for me is exciting! I can start to add buildings to the layout and, with this sort of major (and often dirty) construction complete, I can add trains back to the layout! Yeah! Stay tuned for more updates!

Alessandro, you are right...I am very excited to finally get all my buildings and lights set up AT LAST!

La Saucisse, of course, you understand my issue, once I am done with this, what next? Just run trains in a circle? :-) You are right, I am afraid that I will have to find something new to work on at that point!

About Me

I'm into N Scale to have fun. Growing up my Dad was really big into HO (U.S.A. of course, mostly Western U.S. roads like Great Northern, Milwaukee Road, Northern Pacific, etc...) and he built me a small N Scale layout which I enjoyed as a small boy. Of the various trains I had at the time, the brand 'Minitrix' stuck in my head. As the years passed, N Scale was forgotten as new interests took my time.
As a new parent, I got back into model trains through O Gauge (Lionel and MTH). However, the cost of this scale, and the space needed for the sort of layout I wanted, made it a very frustrating hobby. Then one day at a hobby shop in California, I came across the Trix 2003 catalog; Inside this catalog were beautiful models of trains across Europe shown on beautiful layouts - and I was converted! It took a few years, but most of the O Gauge was sold (or stored) and I used the funds to start my new fantasy in N Scale.
Soon, I also discovered the amazing trains of Japan in N Scale, and begin my quest to build an interesting urban layout in a complete fantasy setting where the great trains of the world can run side by side!